Tiffany suddenly grabbed her hand and looked right into her eyes, her own wide with distress. ‘You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that I absolutely, definitively did not mean this to happen,’ she blurted out. ‘None of it. I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Tiff, don’t be dramatic, it’s just flowers. Who sent them?’
Her gaze dropped to the duvet. ‘JC. He must have found out where I was from the agency. I asked them not to give out my new address …’
‘Hold up.’ Lorna raised her hand in a stop sign. ‘Who’s JC?’
‘Jean-Claude.’ She reached out for Rudy but he buried himself deeper into the duvet. ‘The dad of the family I was working for.’
‘You’re kidding me?’ Lorna’s relief that it wasn’t Sam was swiftly replaced with shock. ‘You’ve been having an affair with your boss? In his house ?’
Tiffany looked horrified. ‘An affair? No! Sod off!’
‘Then what? Why else would he be sending you flowers?’
‘Because … because he’s trying to get me to go back. And I can’t.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Ngggh.’ Tiff grabbed her face with her hands, then looked up and said, in a rush, ‘He’s been having an affair, with his PA. I know, cliché. He talked me into providing an alibi for a weekend away when Sophie was in Paris and he was meant to be here. That’s one thing.’ She held up a finger. ‘Then Sophie worked it out, and made me give her an alibi. I know, it’s mad. That’s two. Then there was the nannycam I found in the bathroom – my bathroom, not even the kids’! – three ; then the fact that I’m supposed to talk to them in English and they all bitch about me in French, four; and five, the final straw, Sophie put me on a diet because I’m fatter than her friends’ nannies and it’s making her look bad.’
Lorna’s jaw dropped.
‘Anyway. They each found out about the other when I got my dates wrong on the calendar, so all hell broke loose. But they’ve clearly made up and realised they can’t control the kids without me, because they’ve been ringing and ringing, trying to get me to go back like nothing happened but I can’t.’ Tiffany lifted her hands, then let them fall again. ‘I can’t do it any more. I’m done .’
‘OK, so find a different family. This lot sound pretty hard work, to be honest, the rows and affairs … Not everyone’s like that, surely?’
‘They’re not the worst. The things I’ve heard from my mates …’ Tiffany let out a shuddering sigh. ‘Lorn, I don’t want to be a nanny any more. I can put up with the kids, but it’s the parents. The constant goalpost shifting, and the can I just tell you something s, and the spying, and the pissy way they demand receipts for coffee while they’re buying a second ski chalet … Ugh! It’s killing me.’ Her eyes were wild.
‘They must miss you, though, if they’re sending you two hundred quids’ worth of premium English roses.’
Tiffany gave her a contemptuous look. ‘Yeah. No. Sophie sent me a voicemail with the children crying in the background. Oh Tiffanneee, les enfants miss yooooou, zey are crying for yooooou. No, they’re not, Sophie. They’re crying because you won’t let them eat fruit sugars.’
Lorna tried not to smile. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She nudged Tiffany. ‘I thought you loved your work. I mean, I’ve left jobs before. I jacked in a very good job to do this. One I actually liked. I wouldn’t have judged.’
‘I didn’t tell you because it would make it real.’ Tiffany chewed her lip. ‘And you’d just moved here, and you kept going on about how you wanted your space, and I didn’t know how long I’d have to stay … Plus I wasn’t … I’m not looking forward to telling my mum.’ She glanced up from under her thick eyelashes; Lorna had never seen her look so scared.
Lorna wanted to say, She’ll understand, but she knew Tiff’s mum well enough to know this would not be the case.
‘At Christmas, she told the whole family over lunch that my next job will be with William and Kate,’ Tiffany went on. ‘She’s got a framed photo of me in my uniform on the sideboard, she’s so proud. And she’s still paying off the loan she took out for my fees. It was massive. I’ll have to pay her the money back, and I don’t know how I can.’
‘Oh.’ That was more serious. Lorna liked Mrs Harris – she was loud and friendly and had regularly dropped in on their flat share with Tupperwares of food to find out how Tiff’s hunt for a rich bachelor was going in West London. But she’d made it clear that just as they’d found the money for Tiff’s brother’s dentistry degree because ‘dentists never go poor now there’s Instagram’, Tiff’s nanny qualification was a similar long-term investment.
‘Plus the agency are on my case, twice a day. I’ll probably end up owing them money too, specially if I’ve broken my contract. And …’ She splayed her hands on the duvet and Rudy wriggled further away. ‘I’ve let the kids down! They weren’t so bad. But at least they’ll get another nanny soon. Sophie isn’t going to handle them solo much longer.’
‘That it?’ Lorna asked. ‘Did you steal their spare change too? Any towels and/or dressing gowns in your suitcase that you want to tell me about?’
Tiff looked up miserably. ‘Do you hate me?’
‘Of course not, you doughnut. Would you like me to?’
‘Well, I hate myself. Lying, and whatnot.’
‘And what does hating yourself achieve?’
‘It makes me feel less of a cow. I’ve let everyone down. And I’m actually crap at the thing I thought I was good at.’ She pushed the hair out of her mournful eyes. ‘This isn’t exactly where I saw myself at this stage in my life. I mean, I wasn’t on Mum’s career trajectory but I hadn’t planned on bailing so soon.’
‘You’ve jacked in your job, not set fire to an orphanage,’ Lorna pointed out calmly. ‘There must be temp work you can do here in the meantime. Or some bar shifts – you’ve done loads of that. And just talk to the agency. Tell them how unreasonable the Hollandes were. What harm can it do?’
‘But I can’t afford to pay you any rent.’
‘We’ll work something out. I’ve budgeted to cover this place until the end of the year. Makes no difference whether you’re here or not. You can help me with Rudy’s anxiety training, if you want. And Keir’s still pushing me to join his Surveillance Dogs for the Old thing. Volunteer for that – he’d be made up.’
Tiffany managed a smile. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yeah. Course.’ Lorna reached over and hugged her. Old friends. She felt a hungry nostalgia for those times, the boxset Sundays, the nights getting ready together, the night buses home. Those days slipped past so quickly, while you were planning a future that never turned out the way you expected.
‘It’ll be better in the morning,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed.’
Around the second coffee break of the day, Keir dropped by on his way to a care meeting. He wanted to pass on the news that he’d spoken to Joyce’s landlords, and to the occupational therapist at the hospital, and the soonest the builders could come in and do the necessary work was now ‘early next week’. He was not impressed with the reception he’d had from the landlord.
‘I told him it was urgent,’ he huffed, ‘but he was so rude! He actually said he was doing Joyce a favour putting these safety aids in, then implied she was trying to fake a compensation claim for her fall.’
‘That’s outrageous.’ Lorna felt furious on Joyce’s behalf. ‘I bet he hasn’t done repairs in there for years.’
‘Probably just looking for excuses to get Joyce out.’ Keir sniffed; he had a constant cold. ‘The cottage further up the lane had a Range Rover outside, couple of holidaymakers unloading Waitrose bags from the boot.’ He lowered his voice. ‘How’s she getting on?’
‘Fine,’ said Lorna. ‘She’s …’
‘Right behind you.’ Joyce emerged from the back room, her knitting bag in hand. She was dressed in a chic grey skirt and jumper, a yellow silk scarf like a splash of sunshine around her neck. She didn’t look like someone who’d recently
been in hospital.
‘Joyce?’ Lorna jumped. How much had she heard? ‘How long have you been there?’
An imperious flash of knobbly fingers and rings. ‘Fifteen minutes or so. I’ve been making myself comfortable in your back room.’ Joyce leaned forward, her eyes sharp with interest. ‘Now, I do like that pottery. Inspired by Troika? Almost illegally so. Who makes it?’
Keir rushed over to her. ‘Joyce! Did you go down those stairs on your own? You need to be careful …’
‘I’m fine , for heaven’s sake.’ Joyce brushed off his hand and made her way over to the gallery desk. ‘It’s good for the hips to attempt stairs once a day. I don’t want to get home and find I can no longer get to my own bed.’
‘But they’re so steep .’
‘Nonsense. I’ve had friends who moved into bungalows and promptly died.’
Lorna suspected Joyce had just made that up. From the way her gaze was sweeping around the new watercolours, it seemed the gallery’s display was interesting her. Lorna wondered which pieces, exactly.
‘That’s rather intriguing.’ Joyce gestured towards a large canvas by the window: green trees against a metallic foil sunset, with a distinctive path winding up a hill. ‘The forest going out of town, is it?’
‘Yes, the artist came in yesterday and left it on spec. It’s inspired by the woods just beyond the park.’ It had been the first artist interview Lorna felt had gone well; the young painter, Corey, had just graduated from the local art school and wasn’t too cool to be thrilled by Lorna’s enthusiasm for his work. He hadn’t even had time to write a wildly pretentious description of his creative process.
Joyce nodded. ‘I rather like it. Just on the cusp of abstract and representational.’
‘And there are dogs hidden in there! You can make them out, in between the leaves and branches. Fourteen, the artist said.’ Mary had reassured Lorna that ‘dogs sell anything in here’.
‘Really? I can’t see … my eyes.’ Joyce didn’t even attempt to squint, and Lorna wished she hadn’t said anything. It was easy to forget about Joyce’s failing sight; she seemed to glide through the world like a tweedy swan.
‘Another reason not to be running up and down stairs!’ Keir interrupted. ‘We need to take care of ourselves!’
Lorna winced at the ‘we’. She already knew Joyce wasn’t a ‘we’ person.
‘We?’ Joyce enquired. ‘Don’t we have some old people to go and look after?’ And Keir remembered his morning meeting and left.
Joyce settled herself in the back room of the gallery with her knitting and a cup of tea that Tiffany and Lorna refreshed every hour or so. She insisted there was nothing she needed, and passed no comments to the browsers, until Lorna put her head round, just after lunch.
Joyce was staring into space, but when Lorna coughed, she snapped back to reality. ‘Oh, hello. Lorna, before you ask again, if it’s not too much trouble, there is something I need.’
‘Of course, what can I do?’
Joyce held up a half-finished dog coat on her knee – very Bernard, in crisp black and white stripes. It was perfect and, as far as Lorna knew, she’d only started it that morning. ‘I forgot to bring my wool with me, in the rush.’
‘Oh.’ It wouldn’t have been something Keir would have thought to pack, knitting wool. ‘Would you like me to go and buy you some more?’ She gestured towards the street. ‘There’s a lovely new craft shop down by the town hall …’
‘No, I need the match. I thought, if you were taking the dogs out later, you might go by Rooks Hall and collect it? And perhaps you could check they locked the door?’
Lorna hadn’t planned to, but there was something about the way Joyce asked that made her think she was worried about her house, whether it was still standing without her in it. ‘Your wool stash is in the trunk by the fireplace, isn’t it?’
‘It is. Thank you, Lorna. You’re very kind.’ Joyce smiled, a real smile that lifted the tiredness in her face. Lorna was touched by it. Joyce had perked up overnight, like a wilting tulip in fresh water, from simply being in the gallery, amongst the art and the colours, and the murmur of conversation.
‘My pleasure,’ she said, and meant it.
A car was already parked in front of Joyce’s house when Lorna pulled up outside – a Land Rover she hadn’t seen before.
Keir’s words sprang into her mind. Was this the bolshie landlord? Or someone else, who’d noticed the house was empty? The car was too muddy and agricultural to be a holidaymaker.
Lorna got out and was halfway up the drive when she had a better idea. She went back to her car and lifted both Bernard and Rudy down from the back, then led them up to the front door, quietly opened it with her key and unhooked their leads, letting them both loose like rockets down the hall.
Bernard barged into the house, barking with delight to be home, with Rudy close behind, tail wagging as he trotted on his short legs after his friend. But it took Bernard nanoseconds to work out that someone was in the house, and then the yapping turned up several notches, followed by the sound of male yelling.
‘Get off! Get off, you little sod!’
Good, thought Lorna, gritting her teeth as she followed, phone in hand. If that was the landlord, he deserved it, going through Joyce’s things without permission, and if it was a burglar …
She dialled the first two nines on her mobile before heading towards the sound of the barking upstairs.
‘Don’t move!’ she yelled. ‘The police are on the way!’
‘Why?’ replied an exasperated man’s voice. ‘For God’s sake, call them back and tell them not to come.’
Lorna ran up the narrow carpeted stairs and on to the landing, where the dogs were bouncing around as if it was the best game ever.
Standing in the bathroom, wearing a pair of paint-stained overalls and wielding a power drill, was a pissed-off-looking Sam Osborne. A radio play was burbling in the background and there was a thermos of tea on the windowsill. Meanwhile Bernard was humping the air around his leg, tongue lolling out with careless joy, while Rudy tried to copy him without having the first idea what Bernard was doing.
‘Get these two out of my bloody way!’ He waved his free hand. ‘There’s wet adhesive and everything in here. They’ll get hairs on it.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Lorna stared at Sam. Normally a man doing DIY was quite a sexy look but Sam didn’t seem 100 per cent in control of the power drill. He held it as if it might suddenly start whirring round at the handle as well as at the bit. And they definitely weren’t his overalls. They were the overalls of a much bigger man.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ He seemed evasive, as if he’d been caught doing something he didn’t want her to see. ‘I’m fitting handrails. What are you doing?’
‘I’m walking Joyce’s dog.’ Lorna’s brain slowly made connections. ‘She’s staying with me at the moment while her … Wait. Are you Joyce’s landlord?’
‘Hang on, let me pause this.’ Sam jabbed at his phone, the source of the radio play. The voices stopped, mid-argument. ‘The farm owns all the houses down this lane. Well, we did – Dad sold a couple. We’ve still got four. At the moment.’
The shabby, intimate details of the bathroom leaped out at Lorna – an old plastic shower cap drying over the taps, the pink hand soap on the basin, brown etched deep in its long cracks. For once, Keir was right to be concerned: this wasn’t a safe place for an old lady. The ancient iron bath was high-sided with creepy claw feet, the dilapidated extractor fan on the frosted window looked loose – everything needed securing.
Lorna stared at him, remembering what Keir had said about the rudeness he’d experienced. Had Sam been rude to Keir? She wouldn’t have thought so, but then he hadn’t held back with his advice to her, had he? The professional, London-hardened Sam was very different to the soft teenager she’d preserved in her memory for so long.
‘And you’re doing the safety work?’ There was a plastic grab rail in a B&Q box,
some screws, a rubber mat. ‘I thought the builders were supposed to be coming next week?’
‘They are, but I thought I’d come over, see if I could make a start. Builders round here charge a fortune. Spend most of the morning standing round talking about what they need to do tomorrow.’ He scratched his beard, as if he didn’t want to go into details. ‘It’s Gabe’s department, managing this sort of thing, but he never negotiates. He was at school with half of them.’
‘So were you.’
Sam gave her a look. ‘Yeah, but I was the smartarse who went to London, wasn’t I? I think they get together and see who can rip me off the most.’
Lorna looked round, distracted by the crimson candlewick dressing gown, the watercolour of fishing boats in a harbour, the splayed toothbrush in a glass. ‘Are all the houses this …’ She wanted to say ‘dated’ but thought it might be rude, so settled for ‘… old-fashioned?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Before you judge, bear in mind not all the tenants refuse to let us in, like Mrs Rothery. We’re renovating two at the moment. The tenancies finished and rather than renew the lease, we decided we’d take a break and do them up. Holiday lets, that’s where we’re aiming to make some money. We’re even looking into doing something with the farm, for townies wanting that country experience – rent your own chicken for the weekend, feed a lamb, milk a cow, kind of thing.’
‘So you’re pimping the cows out now?’
‘Ha ha.’ But Sam was too busy measuring the bath to see her expression was more shocked than sarcastic. ‘Obviously Mrs Rothery’s lease is long-standing, so we’re doing what we can for her,’ he went on. ‘Mind you …’ He sucked his teeth. ‘I’ve got the list the social worker emailed over but there’s only so much you can do. Grab rails are fine, but you get to the point where it’s just safer for everyone to be in a more modern place.’
‘Maybe Joyce wants to stay in the home she’s been happy in for so many years.’